Nigeria’s Info tech sector has received a major boost as President Muhammadu Buhari and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, signed a $328m agreement on the National Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure Backbone Phase 11 (NICTIB 11) project in Beijing, China.
The deal was signed on the sidelines of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
The NICTIB 11 agreement would be between Galaxy Backbone Limited and Huawei Technologies Limited (HUAWEI) at the cost of 328 million dollars facility provided by the Chinese EXIM Bank.
The bank facility is for the development of NICTIB 11 project which is consistent with the current administration’s commitment to incorporating the development of ICT into national strategic planning under the National Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).
This deal is a massive win for Nigeria’s tech sector because statistics from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment indicates that the ICT services will generate $88 billion and create up to three million jobs in the next three years for the economy.
Kitskoo Cloud Services, a Lagos-based ICT firm estimates that Nigeria’s cloud computing market alone – an arm of the country’s $32 billion telecommunications sector – is estimated to worth about $100 million (N20 billion) yearly.